Just rent the room for two days and be done with it.

That's all Nicole Clark heard in the days leading up to the 2016 NFL Draft. From every corner of San Bernardino, they made the same plea – plan a two-day draft party in the event her son, Kenneth Duane Clark Jr., should slip into the second round.

Nicole didn't want to hear it. Not from Kenny. Not from anyone. It got to the point she started cutting people off before they could even finish their sentences.

There was an electronic billboard announcing Kenny's draft party was taking place on April 28, so April 28 it would be. There was no point in booking the hall for a second day because it wouldn't be necessary.

Her baby was going first round.

"I don't want to hear any negativity," Nicole would tell them. "You're either on board with what I'm on board with or you're not – and if you're not, then keep it to yourself because I don't want that energy."

It wasn't pride or prestige motivating Nicole's optimism. It was faith – and maybe a little stubbornness – that everything her son had been through in his 20 years had brought him to this moment.

The pre-draft process introduced Kenny and his family to every team in the NFL. After the NFL Scouting Combine, their house flooded with T-shirts, hats and every piece of apparel imaginable. Family members picked the pile of 300 or so items down to a few parcels.

It was only then Nicole took something for herself, a small Packers beanie she noticed near the bottom. She brought that hat with her to the hotel on draft night and lingered on it for a few seconds after changing for the party.

"I'm standing in the door of my room and I looked back at that beanie and I said to Kenny, 'What do you think that means, this is the only thing we have left from the combine stuff,'" Nicole said. "He said, 'You never know.'"

The room was bursting beyond capacity, with more than 250 in attendance. Clark was calm at first since he wasn't pegged to be drafted in the top 15, but that still didn't stop Nicole from saying, "Who is that?" and "You're better than him," after every selection NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell read.

Finally, after the Packers went on the clock at No. 26, Clark's phone rang with a call from General Manager Ted Thompson. As the gathered crowd began to roar, Nicole charged over to the oldest of her four children.

"I never saw her run so fast. I mean she sprinted toward the table," Kenny said. "She just kept saying, 'Who is that? Who is that?' I'm trying to talk to Ted. I'm like, 'Hold on, hold on.' Everybody starts telling her, 'It's Green Bay, it's Green Bay.' She was the first one that started screaming. I couldn't even hear Ted."

This is Nicole Clark – straight, no chaser. What you see is what you get. She's an everywoman who wants the best for her children and willingly carries the world on her shoulders without seeking any assistance or adulation.

Never one to seek handouts but always the first to give, "Auntie Nickie" welcomed dozens of cousins into the family's four-bedroom home growing up. She cooked pots of spaghetti, corn and baked rolls. Kids would be sprawled out from one side of the house to the other during sleepovers.

Amidst the chaos, Nicole would sit peacefully in her room and listen to the laughter, stories and dreams. She knew the struggle and understood how far a good deed today can go tomorrow.

That's because she'd seen it. She'd lived it.

"Where we're from, the statistics aren't good and I didn't want my children to be a statistic," Nicole said. "My kids were not going to be gang-bangers. They're not going to be drug dealers. That was my mindset. I have to keep them focused."

Kenny Jr. took his dad's incarceration the hardest since he was old enough to understand Kenny Sr. wasn't coming home, but not big enough to understand everything that had happened.

Confusion left him feeling angry, empty and abandoned. From Day 1, Nicole encouraged her children to express their feelings. She certainly expressed hers a time or two, but she'd also seen the effect fractured families can have on children.

"Forgiveness is big and it's not for the other person, it's for yourself," Nicole would tell her son. "You need to sit down and tell your dad how you feel. You're telling me – and I get it – but you need to tell your dad and you need to forgive your dad for not being there."

Forgiveness wasn't easy. Nicole could've been mad at the world, mad at her husband and even mad at God, but instead pulled her kids together every night and prayed before bed.

There were also nights Nicole would cry over bills or the physical demand of working double shifts as a nurse at the California Institution for Women, a prison in Corona, Calif., but she never allowed those emotions to surface in the presence of her children.

As the kids got older and costs rose, Nicole picked up more and more doubles, reporting to work at 6 a.m. and usually getting home around 11 p.m.

"She worked really hard," Kenny Jr. said. "We always had great Christmases, great birthdays. She always made sure anything that we needed – we never wanted for nothing, honestly."

Kenny Jr. was tasked with making sure his younger siblings were fed and showered for school, and taken care of afterwards on days Nicole worked late. They'd always wait up to chat. This became their routine, their new normal.

"I'd get home and I would say, 'I love you guys, I am exhausted. Tell me about your day as fast as fast as you can,'" Nicole said. "And we'd start over (the next day)."

A year after Kenny Sr.'s conviction, Nicole signed Kenny Jr. back up for football. She didn't know the game like her husband – the family still laughs about the time Nicole bought Kenny Jr. baseball cleats instead of football – but Kenny Sr. would relay suggestions on what to do.

Kenny Jr. became Nicole's rock by the time he was 12. To this day, she feels guilty thinking about how Kenny Jr.'s childhood ended years before it should have – regardless of how many times he tells her not that wasn't the case.

However, Kenny Jr.'s maturity at a young age was critical. In a video with the online production "Uninterrupted" last year, Kenny Sr. credited his eldest son with maintaining the "cohesiveness" of their family.

"My kids were obedient and it started with Kenny," Nicole said. "I really think that because he listened, they followed. Kenny was the older brother, even though they thought they were older than him at times."

Things slowly got better, as the family moved from San Bernardino to Colton, back to San Bernardino and finally settled into a home in Rialto. They didn't always live in the best neighborhoods, but Nicole kept her kids sheltered from the streets.

Along the way, Nicole took her nephew out of foster care and eventually began looking after her niece. She raised them both as her own. That open-door policy, Nicole says, had direct ties to what her great grandmother did for her as a child.

"She's got a big heart," Kenny Jr. said. "She wants nobody going down the wrong path. She always feels like she can help somebody out in some kind of way."

On weekends, she'd drive her children to visit Kenny Sr. As years passed, Kenny Jr. no longer felt furious with his dad. They'd talk football, family and life. Slowly, the anger began to dissipate as Nicole hoped it would.

"I didn't have the mom-and-dad thing going on when I was younger," Nicole said. "I always said I don't care what was going on in my life – if I ever had children that I would make sure both parents were involved. I would never be the one, shall I say, to separate the children from their father."

She still makes it a point to be in Green Bay for every holiday and as many games as possible, even if it requires back-to-back redeye flights. However, Nicole says she's done with cold-weather games after two harrowing episodes.

The first was having to sit through the sub-zero game against the Chicago Bears during Kenny's rookie season in 2016. "It was like a negative-100 to me," Nicole said. "I'll never go back to Chicago unless it's good temperatures."

The other occurred shortly after flying in for the Packers-Cardinals game on Dec. 2. Walking to her rental car, Nicole slipped on black ice and fell awkwardly. She broke her foot and tore the meniscus in her knee.

Kenny and his girlfriend tried to convince her to go to the hospital or at least stay at his place during the game. Nicole refused both offers. Instead, she took a shower, put on her Packers gear and went to the game.

"I did not fly all that way to not go to my baby's game," Nicole said. "That was the first time I ever sat in the family lounge. I was in so much pain that I couldn't walk down the bleachers … but I got to see my baby. So that's all that matters."

The day after the game, Packers physician Dr. Patrick McKenzie outfitted Nicole with a boot and crutches, and sent her home to begin rehab.

Perhaps Nicole's proudest moment came during a local football game Kenny attended. He encountered a kid doing drugs who recognized him. The youth told him how he idolized him and wanted to do better.

Kenny gave him $80 to buy a new pair of shoes and told him to "start doing the right thing."

"People were looking around at us and questioning why would we do that? We did that because you have to give people a chance," Nicole said. "You can't think someone is going to go out and do the same thing that they were doing before. You never know what that might do for that person. That might give them hope to change."

Nicole lives by the standard that you never know what a simple "hello" might do for someone's day. She witnessed how far that can go during her six years working at the prison.

She also stays on her son about making sure he does his tithing at church. If Nicole could find a way to give as a single mom raising six kids, then so can her son, the fourth-year NFL player.

"I don't care how much money you got or whatever you're doing, you have to always give back and make sure you're doing your thing," said Kenny of his mom's advice. "Never forget where you came from and give back."

Nicole takes time to reflect every now and then on her journey. Sometimes it brings her to tears, born out of thankfulness. She still doesn't know exactly how she made all the ends meet other than "by the grace of God."

Today, all of her kids are through high school. Her fraternal twin daughters are now following in her footsteps, pursuing nursing degrees. Under the terms of his early enrollment for the draft, Kenny told his mom he'd eventually return to finish his degree.

In his mind, it's the least Kenny can do to pay her back for her selflessness and sacrifice to help him get where he is today.

"I love her, man. She's so cool," Kenny said. "For her to be where she is now and her to raise the kids that she has … that's what's motivating to me. That's what I love about her. The motivation factor, how hungry I am, how I work and how humble I am – all of that is her.